


You Have Me

by cherryblossomriot



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Destiel - Freeform, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mentions of Suicidal Thoughts, a little honesty between two idiots in love, just like angst and fluff I guess, staring into eyes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-04
Updated: 2020-02-04
Packaged: 2021-02-27 22:20:25
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,978
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22553152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cherryblossomriot/pseuds/cherryblossomriot
Summary: A season 13 episode 22 coda. Castiel kills an alternate version of himself, and in order to deal with his fears and doubts, seeks out consolation from Dean.
Relationships: Castiel/Dean Winchester
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45





	You Have Me

**Author's Note:**

> A Coda for season 13 episode 22 because the scene where Cas kills his other self gave me lots of thoughts and I just thought that my boy need a little comfort from a certain someone. I haven't seen past this episode yet and don't know if they address later in the show, but somehow I doubt it, so here we go. There are some mentions of suicide/suicidal thoughts, nothing too graphic, but if that will in any way trigger you, please don't read it. I'd rather you be healthy and happy than read my fic and be in danger.

It’s dark when he sees him, the flash of movement, the ripple of a long coat. He can hear the sounds of fighting from within the compound, the trademark grunts of the Winchesters as they deck whoever stands against them, the slamming of fists connecting with flesh, the hard thumps of bodies hitting the floor. They don’t need him in there. But out here is a different story. Castiel yanks his angel blade from the gut of one of his brothers-or, at least, the doppelganger of one of his already fallen kin, Jeremiel. Castiel remembers him, his wings, smaller than most angels, but perhaps just as much, if not more powerful, and his spirit, warm and open, he was one of the few angels who had never blamed him for anything. But most of all, he remembers his brother’s kindness, his compassion towards humans. It was no wonder his name meant _mercy of God_. But now, just like so many others of Castiel’s brothers and sisters, his Jeremiel is dead, caught in the crossfires of one of the many wars of Heaven and Hell and the Winchesters. And Castiel would hesitate to kill this one, wish to save him, help him. But he cannot see the open love and kindness in this Jeremiel’s eyes. All he sees is cold conviction. Darkness. And he knows it’s not worth it, he knows this version of Jeremiel will never change, never feel that love that God bestowed in him for humanity again. And dimly, as this empty, twisted shadow of his brother falls to the hard earth, Castiel wonders when he lost the conviction to try to save them. He wonders if he has become like the angels in this world, warped, driven to destruction, _evil_. Before he can dwell, before he can reassure himself that _he’s not like that_ , or catch himself lying, he sees the truth in the corner of his vision. Another angel climbing into a vehicle, ready to flee and cut his losses to save his life. It is perhaps these kinds of people-or angels-that he hates the most, the ones that run when their brothers are in trouble, when there might be a chance to save one of their own. In a second, he is upon the angel, grabbing onto the collar of his coat and pulling him down, ready to kill him, because that’s what Castiel does now, kill his own. When he sees which angel it is, which specific, cosmic entity that he’s ready to run through, he lets his fist fly, the connection of his knuckles to this world’s version of himself both satisfying and enticing. He wants to keep punching the face in front of him, wants to hit and hit until there’s nothing left but the bleeding, pulsing lump of a face and dead eyes. But he holds back, instead gripping the lapels of his doppelganger's coat like he wants to strangle the life out of the fabric, like he’s not letting the chance to kill himself go. He looks into the face of himself, and sees a dead eye, faded and marred, a scar upon his features. But that’s not the eye that horrifies him, that angers him to the very pit of his essence. In the other eye, the one that is physically clear but much more blind than the other, mania and wickedness swirl in its shattered depths, a kaleidoscope of sadism and emptiness. Castiel also sees the twisted fascination on the angel’s face, the constant twitching of a chin, like his other self can’t wait to devour what’s in front of him.  
“More than one of us,” he huffs in a voice equally as deep as Castiel’s, but full of intonations and accents that sound nothing like him, “Fascinating.”  
Castiel narrows his eyes at the almost glee on his twin’s face, the way he looks as if he wants to tear Castiel apart piece by piece, dissecting every inch of his vessel and his spirit in order to understand their complexities.  
“I’ve gotten used to it,” Castiel replies, ice as cold as fire in his voice. He glares, thoughts flitting to the many versions of his vessel he’s been, he’s seen. Jimmy Novak. Emmanuel. Lucifer. The Empty. Now, just himself, but heart gnarled into black, wooden knots.  
“You align yourself with the h-humans,” the other Castiel sounds both patronizing and disgusted. Like Castiel’s love of humanity is shameful. And maybe, if it were up to the angels, it would be. But Castiel could care less about this pitiful, horrible sight before him, and his morose opinion. Castiel has something this angel could never have.  
“I vastly prefer them to angels,” he growls, digging his the silver edge of his angel blade harder into this Castiel’s throat. The metal glints in the night, a sliver of deadly moonlight in the darkness.  
“Don’t think you are better than me,” his counterpart hisses, back pressed against the cold, unforgiving surface of the side of the vehicle. He seems almost resentful, and Castiel wonders if he sees something in him that his doppelganger sorely envies.  
“Well, we are the same,” his doppelganger continues, as if to further his argument, as if Castiel hadn’t already agreed.  
Castiel looks at him in that brief moment, eyes narrowed, forehead creased in concentration. He sees more than brokenness in this version of himself. He sees a version who might not have been so lost, if only he’d been found. If only, someone had looked him in the eye and demanded more, cultivated the rebelliousness that was already there. But this Castiel never saw those eyes, never saw the soul beneath it, and instead, he’s not even broken, because he had never been whole in the first place. But then, he also sees that dark determination lurking beneath, notices the innocent blood practically dripping from every pore of this Castiel’s body, sees the hundreds he’s slaughtered. And he knows, this Castiel is not wrong.  
“Yes,” Castiel pauses, and the other Castiel sucks in a breath, like he knows what will happen next.  
“We are.”  
Glancing once more at the demonic angel before him, Castiel plunges his blade into the doppelganger's stomach, the familiar, sharp sound of silver slitting skin filling the space between them, accompanied by a guttural scream and the bright flash of light. As the empty vessel crumples to the ground, Castiel can’t help but think of a time so far from now and so close, when he’d sat on a pair of stiff, starch sheets, looked into the eyes of the man who’d saved him, who’d done so much for him, and said, _“I’m afraid I might kill myself.”_

* * *

He doesn’t have time to think about it until they’re back, until this world’s group of fighters are bustling around and preparing to leave, until Jack and Lucifer are being carefully watched by Gabriel, and Sam is somewhere else, helping Bobby and Mary with organization. He finds himself with nothing to do, no assignment to complete and idleness perverts his thoughts, sending him back to the neurotic sneer of his other self, to the horrific reality that without the Winchesters, Castiel would have been like he was when he had consumed all those souls, when he murdered all those angels. Except much worse. Because he wouldn’t feel it, not the guilt that bound his heart like the crushing constraint of chains, not the sorrow that flared whenever he remembered his fallen siblings, not even the reverence of life or the desire to help those in need. And he’d never have felt it, the realest, most important emotion he’d ever encountered, the emotion that made him realize why his Father had banished Lucifer in order to save his creation, why Kelly sacrificed everything for Jack, why Dean and Sam couldn’t bare to lose one another, why the world revolved at all. Why he can’t fathom the thought of losing any of the Winchesters for good. The thought of their deaths conjures dark, bloody memories, of his own hands wreaking havoc on Dean, not even once, but twice. The sound of a cracked and broken, “I need you” fills his ears like a phantom touch, and he can’t get the sight of Dean, close to death, seeping his precious life force onto the floor, out of his head. And then, Castiel thinks of the way he’d stormed in on Donatello, extracting the information like it was nothing, ripping his mind to shreds like it didn’t matter. And the look on Dean’s face after he’d done it. He hadn’t been remorseful then, and he doesn’t regret the act now, as it got them this far, but he regrets the method. He regrets how very little thought he spared to the well-fare of another being. He regrets who he has become. Somehow, whether because his body takes him to Dean when it’s on auto-pilot, or if Dean is just a massive gravitational force that Castiel can never resist, he finds himself searching for the older Winchester, for the only one he’s ever let call him out on his emotional state. He finds him staring into the intestines of a rusted bus’s engine, twisting and oiling and fixing whatever he can to get the old thing working. Castiel doesn’t even need to say anything for Dean to know he’s there, and Dean doesn’t turn around when he says, “Hey Cas, need anything?”  
Castiel needs a great many things, but none of them are what Dean means.  
“No.” Then after a rest in the sheet music that is their conversation, Castiel adds, “How are the repairs to the bus going?”  
“Hmm,” Dean grunts, leaning forward to reach something deep within the network of tubes and pipes, “The engine’s about thirty years old and everything is coated in enough rust to make me want to clean every surface and then myself, but I think she’ll run.”  
Castiel offers a non-committal grunt and leans back, wondering if he should just leave now, not give anything away. Before he can, however, Dean says gruffly, “Something tells me you didn’t just come here to get a cost report from the mechanic. What’s eating you?”  
Castiel pauses, marveling at just how well Dean knows him. The gesture sends a pang of heartache through his chest, and he doesn’t know why.  
“Come on Cas, talk to me,” Dean demands, and that’s all Castiel really needs to hear before he’s sighing and hanging his head.  
“I met this world’s version of me,” he replies, feeling so, _so_ tired.  
“Really?” Dean sounds more intrigued than skeptical, because that’s how weird their lives are.  
“Yes. He was...similar to all the other angels here. Cold-hearted, sadistic.”  
Dean nods, his back still to Castiel.  
“I killed him.”  
At this, neither of them says anything. Castiel waits for Dean to tell him he did the right thing, or that he doesn’t understand why Castiel is telling him all this, but his best friend remains silent, as if he knows that there’s more that Castiel needs to say.  
“And I...enjoyed it.”  
There it is. That thought that should bother him more than it does. But all he can think is how major of a screw-up he is, how he couldn’t do anything right for so long, how he feels as if all he is is one enormous failure. And he wonders if the world would be better off without this Castiel too.  
“Shit, Cas,” Dean sighs, rubbing a grease stained hand over his face and turning around, forgetting the engine and their pressing deadline to get home for a moment.  
“He said we weren’t so different. That we were the same. And it...it terrifies me that I agreed.”  
Dean’s standing much closer to him than he was a moment ago, his deep, complex eyes looking into Castiel’s face, searching his features. Castiel averts his gaze, uneager to look into Dean’s eyes and see the emotion in them, and to reveal so much of his vulnerability to Dean.  
“I’ve killed so many people, Dean. I’ve murdered so many of my brothers and sisters, and now, there are hardly any angels left. Heaven is failing, Lucifer is out of the cage, and the world’s in danger because of-”  
“Don’t say it,” Dean cuts him off, voice both rough and soft at the same time, “It’s not your fault, Cas. Yeah, you made some bad decisions, but so have I. So’s Sam. Hell, so has everyone here. You can’t blame everything on you, Cas.”  
“But-” Cas tries to argue against himself, tried to remind Dean of how horrible he really is, but Dean won’t buy it.  
“No. You are good, Cas. You fail, but you never stop trying, alright? You care about us all, you’ve saved my ass more times than I can count. You don’t deserve to die. The world would not be better off without you.”  
At that, Castiel jerks his head up, finally meeting Dean’s gaze.  
“How did you…” he doesn’t understand how Dean could have read his thoughts.  
Dean lets out a dry, humorless laugh.  
“Don’t you think I know you by now Cas? I know what you’re thinking sometimes before you think it.”  
Castiel raises a skeptical eyebrow.  
“Yeah, yeah, don’t give me that look. I didn’t say all the time,” Dean huffs, but Castiel waits.  
“I know because...I’ve been there, alright? I’ve killed people too, Cas. I’ve taken innocent lives, I’ve made stupid, stupid mistakes. And, I’ve hurt you. So I know how it feels.”  
Totally lost now in the swirling depths of Dean’s green eyes, Castiel frowns, needing Dean to know how wrong he is, how blameless he is.  
“But you can’t blame yourself for anything that occurred with the Mark of Cain. You weren’t in control of yourself, the Mark was giving you violent urges that were not your own.”  
Dean laughs again, slapping his hand on Cas’s arm good-naturedly.  
“Well, then, you can’t blame yourself for what happened when you had all of those Leviathans in your vessel. Or when you were brain-washed to attack me. Or when you were under a spell and attacked me again.”  
“That’s not the same thing.”  
“Uh, hell yeah it is, Cas,” Dean insists, and they both let it drop, because they know that neither of them are going to ever stop carrying the guilt of their actions, and they’re not going to get anywhere with this conversation if they keep trying to convince each other otherwise.  
“Listen, Cas. I know you think you’re useless or a screw-up, or whatever, but you’re not, alright? You’re important and we need you. You’re our family, Cas.”  
No matter how many times Castiel hears it, he’s still awed by the thought that the two most heroic and good men he’s ever met consider him to be their family.  
“I, uh, know I haven’t told you this, and you probably couldn’t tell, but when you were gone...I was a wreck, Cas. I couldn’t function without you. So don’t go saying that it’d be better if you died, because you damn well know it wouldn’t be,” Dean’s voice is suddenly strong and fierce and desperate, and Castiel can’t breathe.  
“I...I need you Cas. If you died...I don’t think I’d have much left in me to keep fighting.”  
The words are out, broken and raw, so honest that it feels like Castiel’s world is shaking, tumbling down around him. No, that’s not true, because Castiel’s world is right in front of him, looking like he’s just poured out his heart and offered it, bleeding and fractured and unguarded, to Cas. And Castiel’s terrified to take it. To break it.  
“But…” Castiel clears his throat, not wanting to see all the emotions rolling in the emerald sea of Dean’s eyes, but mesmerized all the same, “I’m already on my way to becoming who he was. Maybe I already am. What’s to stop me?”  
He knows the answer. He does. He knows that other Castiel never knew Sam and Dean, never felt any sort of profound bond or complete and utter devotion. But he needs to- _has_ to hear it. He has to hear Dean say it.  
“I am,” Dean declares, and if Castiel thought everything was overwhelming before, now he’s practically drowning. “I’ll stop you Cas. I already have. This world’s Cas never knew me or Sam. That’s why he turned out so psycho. But you have us. You have me.”  
And they’re staring at each other. Neither can say a word, the air so thick it clogs their lungs. And Castiel is selfish. He is selfish because he knows that the deadline is looming, that the fate of the world rests on their shoulders, that the bus needs to be fixed and the only person who can do it is standing here reassuring him and gently touching his hand to Castiel’s face, but Castiel can’t move. Dean cradles Cas’s face like he is the most precious thing in the world, like he _is_ the world, and Castiel can’t bear to stop it. He’s never felt more special in his life than when Dean is touching him like this, than when Dean is looking at him like he’s everything sacred and holy, like Castiel is the only thing between Dean and despair. And Castiel wants to touch Dean, wants to hold him and show him how much he means to Cas, but before he can, Dean’s hand is dropping from his face, and his best-friend is turning away, looking over his shoulder as he goes.  
“Now come on, we’ve got two worlds to save.”  
And as Castiel lets a small smile flicker over his lips, he knows that despite everything, despite demons and angels and the Devil himself, as long as Dean Winchester is with him, it will all be okay.


End file.
